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Fiasco
Definitions
- 1 A sudden or unexpected failure.
"The event turned into a complete fiasco when the power went out."
- 2 a sudden and violent collapse wordnet
- 3 A ludicrous or humiliating situation. Some effort that went quite wrong.
"There was the fiasco about Olga coming to the tableaux, which was the cause of her sending that very tart reply, via Miss Lyall, to Lady Ambermere's impertinence, and the very next morning, Lady Ambermere, coming again into Riseholme, perhaps for that very purpose, had behaved to Lucia as Lucia had behaved to the moon, and cut her. That was irritating, but the counter-irritant to it had been that Lady Ambermere had then gone to Olga's, and been told that she was not at home, though she was very audibly practising in her music-room at the time."
- 4 A wine bottle in a (usually straw) jacket.
"I sent for the porter and when he came I told him in Italian to get me a bottle of Cinzano at the wine shop, a fiasco of chianti and the evening papers. He went away and brought them wrapped in newspaper, unwrapped them and, when I asked him to, drew the corks and put the wine and vermouth under the bed."
Etymology
Borrowed from Italian fiasco (“bottle, flask”), from Late Latin flasca, flascō (“bottle, container”), from Frankish *flaskā (“bottle, flask”) from Proto-Germanic *flaskǭ (“bottle”); see flask. “Failure” sense comes through French faire fiasco from Italian theatrical slang far fiasco (literally “to make a bottle”), of uncertain origin; perhaps from an expression fare il fiasco, meaning to play a game with the forfeit that the loser will buy the next bottle or round of drinks. Doublet of flacon, flagon, and flask.
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